farm workers in the 1928 Fla h'cane

[Guest guest]

Alice, thanks for bringing this update to our attention. Sad it is the lack

of interest in " counting " farm workres, then and now.

Impact of the 1928 hurricane on farm workers in central Florida has been

portrayed by Zora Neale Hurston in They're Eyes Were Watching God (NY:

Harper and Row, 1937). Her account accounts in a way that falls outside

counting through the story of Janie Mae Crawford (mother born in FL,

grandmother born in GA). By now, everyone is familiar with her roustabout

beau, " Tea Cake " (aka Vergible Woods), son of Evening Sun, and season that

they worked the crops around Lake Okeechobee. This is the Hurston novel

with the often-quoted paragraph, " Day by day now, the hordes of workers

poured in... "

V Bletzer